The use of ellipsis can either mislead or insult, and the reader must rely on the good intentions of the writer who uses them. – Ellipsis in Writing
The running and the not smoking and the not drinking and the empty nights and the end of school and the coming travels have me…itchy.
It’s a common theme, I know, one that’s starting to bore me. I am forced to, when this happens, try to bring myself back into the moment. Where I am now. Where I must continue to get work finished. After all, the work needs to get finished so I can leave with a conscious that is mostly clear.
It is a ritualistic caring though. Not an actual one.
I have come to grips with this as part of my personality. I trust that people can rely upon the good intentions of the writer in this case.
***
Given the context, this could be anything from an admission of guilt or an expression of being dumbfounded as a result of something that another person has just said or done. – Ellipsis in Japanese manga
Year two of my sobriety has been interesting, inter-personally speaking.
They tell you in The Program that you shouldn’t date your first year, a rule I mistakenly discarded because – well, as the rest of the addicts can attest – we look for the easier, softer way. When I crossed the magic threshold, though, I assumed life would get much better in that regard.
I didn’t.
The best – and worst – came with the ending of a part of my life that was never fully realized the way it was supposed to. The Muse is gone from my life now, a decision we made seven months ago. We spoke once, very briefly, after that. It didn’t go well. As should be expected.
She trickles into my mind now and then. Or her ghost does. I wonder now how much I really knew her. We spent a year re-knowing each other as friends, but there were always walls.
The damage I inflicted – and the damage she came with – was just too deep for us.
I am guilty and dumbfounded.
***
The latter formula means the sum of all natural numbers from 1 to 100. However, it is not a formally defined mathematical symbol. – Ellipsis in Mathematics
Every year, I lose roughly 33 percent of my students. (I haven’t taught freshmen yet.)
I gather them, teach them, know them and lose them within 9 months. It’s difficult.
Worse: it becomes a game of numbers for me. I have so much time and so much energy. I want to build lasting communities that continue each year, which means there are only so many students I can reach. So many I can try to know. So many I can really teach.
I see them all, but I know all to well how little that actually means in the grand scheme of things. We all want to connect with people in our lives.
But time – and sums – work against me.
***
In some programming languages (including Perl, Ruby, Haskell, and Pascal), a shortened two-dot ellipsis is used to represent a range of values given two endpoints. – Ellipsis in Programming
There are always to endpoints: where you are and where you want to be.
I’ve spent a bit of time in the last month contemplating my next moves. I’m 38 after all and moves need to be contemplated lest life find itself slipping away. I’m not quite ready to talk about them here because there are still a few ends that need to be tied up. But I can see an end game for me that gets me closer to where I want to be.
I am not happy with who or where I am in life now, but that is a function of me. A function of things that are within my power to change.
I’ve learned a bit about myself, Brad in Year 2. Not all of it has been good, but it’s been far better than it’s ever been before. I have a clarity about where and what my life should be. And a plan for how I should and can make that happen.
This feels good. And intentioned.
